Canadians may experience “longer lineups” at passport and Service Canada offices now that applications have reopened following the end of the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s (PSAC) strike for employees handling those services.
Families, Children and Social Development Minister Karina Gould said Tuesday that “particularly this week, Canadians can probably expect longer lineups because of the two weeks of applications that didn’t come in.”
“We will deal with them on an urgent basis,” she said.
Passport Canada said in a series of tweets on Tuesday that services have resumed following the end of the strike. Passport processing had been closed for nearly two weeks as federal workers were on strike.
“Clients may experience longer lineups at service centres, longer wait times through the call centre, and longer processing times for passports as we expect higher than normal application volumes,” one tweet states.
Only passport applications that met essential criteria on humanitarian grounds or emergency situations were processed during the strike, Social Development Canada said in a statement.
“Service Canada received approximately 27,900 applications during the disruption, which represents approximately 81 per cent fewer domestic passport applications than forecasted for this period.”
Gould said though that Canadians don’t need to go early in the morning to the passport office because applications will be triaged based on date of travel. The agency is expecting a number of applications to come in over the next couple of days from people who didn’t drop off their applications due to the strike, she said.
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said Tuesday that about 100,000 immigration cases were not processed during the strike.
Measures put in place to address backlogs following COVID-19 disruptions should help the department get back on track quickly, Fraser said.
“We’re going to continue to benefit from the higher productivity that we’ve achieved as a result of the resources that we’ve added to the system,” Fraser said.
The strike ended Monday after the federal government and PSAC reached a deal to raise wages by 12.6 per cent compounded over four years, retroactive to 2021.
Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said Monday that all agencies impacted by the strike would be working “as fast as possible” to resume services and address any backlog.
Gould had earlier advised Canadians to not make a passport application during the strike because “it just simply won’t be processed.”
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